Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday April 06, 2005 @10:05AM
from the submission-avalanche dept.

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has a lengthy article detailing BitMover's recent decision to drop support for its free version of BitKeeper. Linus Torvalds began using BitKeeper back in February of 2002, a decision that has resulted in frequent flamefests, but also in increased kernel development productivity. Evidently the recent decision was due to OSDL's decision to keep paying a developer who was working on reverse engineering BitKeeper... What tool Linus will move to is still being determined."

But it's true, linus didn't consider the nature of what he was using and got burned.

While everyone has a fit when stallman is mentioned, it's true that the people who don't consider the politics of licences are often burned.

Look at how much MS or Apple have given back to BSD as opposed to how much linux has got from IBM. Who has the better dynamic community of sharing?

Seriously, there are many reasons FOR the GPL. I am sick of people who aren't political having an allergic reaction to it, while you might not value the reasons for the GPL there *ARE* perfectly legitimate and powerful reasons for believing in it.

There is tons of hateful propaganda against the GPL. I don't mind the BSD guys* doing what they do, it's cool. I have respect for them. But I don't like the hate that gets sent back. It's one thing not to agree, it's another thing to just characterise other people as "weenies" and "hippies" or whatever.

*Fully comprehending that there are pro-BSD trolls that don't represent all of BSD community. Just talking about impressions.

You mean like this [apple.com]? Not that I'm claiming that the BSD license is better than the GPL or vice versa. Just trying to point out the fact that Apple has been pretty good about contributing back to the community, regardless of the license.

Do you forget so soon that 95% of computer jobs are in house jobs, and aren't being sold outside the company? That means if GPL destroyed 'for pay' software, a minimum of 95% of the job would still be there.

I hate replying to anon's, as it's unlikely they will read the reply... but anyway..

Every programming job I've had has been code for only one company. Mostly intranet/extranet coding (lotus domino shit), but also various programs for research companies etc. I can't imagine any of those jobs going if everything became opensource.

Well, mine isn't best but I sure want to be counted as an "I told you" on this one too. But it seems like lots of people told him so, and we all got dissed because they said we weren't pragmatic. Well, we were pragmatic, and the folks who thought they were the pragmatic ones weren't thinking through consequences all of the way to the end-game.

The question is where to go now? My preference would be GNU Arch, as it's more decentralized. But it may not be ready for this heavy a use, and I am hardly an expert in revision control.

The question is where to go now? My preference would be GNU Arch, as it's more decentralized.

Hi Bruce,

You want to keep an eye on Monotone [venge.net]. Recently, it has gone through a redesign specifically aimed at making it changeset-oriented, with a view to replacing BitKeeper. It has a ways to go, but the project is active and the work is professional. Arch and Subversion are both worthy and usable systems right now, and many projects are already working happily with one or the other.

As another reply, this quoting Linus himself:"PS. Don't bother telling me about subversion. If you must, start reading up on "monotone". That seems to be the most viable alternative, but don't pester the developers so much that they don't get any work done. They are already aware of my problems;)"

Darcs is nice, but it doesn't (yet) perform well enough for regular kernel development. The patch reordering algorithms work by loading the entire history in memory, which does not scale well to large trees.

Well, mine isn't best but I sure want to be counted as an "I told you" on this one too. But it seems like lots of people told him so, and we all got dissed because they said we weren't pragmatic. Well, we were pragmatic, and the folks who thought they were the pragmatic ones weren't thinking through consequences all of the way to the end-game

What consequences? Having the kernel be way better than it would have been if Linus had listened to you people and not used BitKeeper?

Sure, BitKeeper might be going away--but the things Linus accomplished while it was here will NOT go way.

I accept that it might have been the only working solution at the time, but Linus would have done better if he'd said it was temporary until a good Open Source product came along. Because it was anyway. There are consequences. 1000 people are going to have to learn a new facility, that facility is going to have to be deployed and files are going to have to be moved into it in a laborious version by version process to convert them, etc. There is also all of the surplus heat produced by the multi-year argument that Bitkeeper brought and some loss of productivity because of that, includng some untold number of people who would otherwise have worked on the kernel but bugged out because of the Bitkeeper decision.

Divert the resources in the demonstratably finite pool of OS developers to create a tool which met the need. Divert resources to adapt to the tool as it evolves. Lose effort and suffer inefficiencies as long as the evolving tool fails to support critical requirements.

I've been to this argument before. I remember when it was about why I should accept TrollTech's non-Open-Source license on Qt. People who did not want to accept that started GNOME. And as GNOME came along and threatened to eclipse their work, TrollTech was convinced to Open Source the Qt library. Their company literally took off with that decision. It's much, much larger now. But there never had to be a GNOME if TrollTech had only figured things out earlier.

If your revision control database gets corrupted due to a bug, you need to wait for someone to fix it.

We're talking about distributed change management in this case, it's not one database. The thread that matters to most people is the one Linus manages, and he pulls out a tarball every time he merges changes into that one. And I assume it will be mirrored and backed up. Now, I only know about Arch, but Arch doesn't even use a database as you would think of one. It's a tree of files, plain files, served by FTP or HTTP, and if you corrupt a revision you corrupt that one only.

I can't believe that things are going to be nearly so bad as you think. I suggest you watch the kernel list once Linus comes back.

I've got no dog in this fight, I don't develop on Linux, use Linux, just a techy and businessman who gets to watch from the sidelines and been around Slashdot for about seven years.

Perhaps I do not get the religous thing, but as the simple business person I am struck at the audacity of the free software communitity sometimes. This was an individual and company that doubled the output of main-line Linux development over a couple year span and the only thing asked was not to try to reverse the product.

Personally, I do not think that was too much to ask. At this point, the way I read yours and other responses is that the Linux faithful have NO trust in the mores and motivations of anyone. After reading the argument its sounds like there was a very symbiotic relationship to quote the book "Getting to Yes", a win-win for each side. I think you and others in this group should take a very good look in the mirror because it was decisions made by individuals that share your viewpoint that ended this relationship because you cannot and do not trust anyone to do the right thing.

My question is where is the outrage at the OSDL for going back on its word. All I hear is bad-mouthing saying "I told you so." The reason everyone is saying I told you so is because the community broke the rules of the game is now going to pay for it. Either grow-up, trust others to do the right thing, and invite commerical enterprises into Linux passed just the shops that develop the big iron or doom yourselves to an existence where Linux only runs on servers and has no commercial packages avaliable.

These sorts of actions by the community always trouble me because I will be creating software as a commercial enterprise one day but when certain factions within the community can't respect the agreement well that makes you less likely to write for Linux. Unlike most arguments the community does not hold the moral high-ground on this one.

If BitMover stated up front that all licenses would be withdrawn from all Linux developers in the event that any single Linux developer tried to reverse engineer BitKeeper, then Linus was a total idiot for agreeing to that license.

If BitMover did not state those conditions up front, then they are being evil and manipulative in yanking licenses from unrelated parties in a fit of pique over what one person is doing in his own time.

Is that balanced enough for you?

Personally, I'm struck by the audacity of a software company trying to control what someone uses a piece of software for, after giving it to him. If Microsoft said you were prohibited from using Windows to write articles critical of Microsoft and contrary to their interests, you would presumably have no problem with that?

My question is where is the outrage at the OSDL for going back on its word. All I hear is bad-mouthing saying "I told you so." The reason everyone is saying I told you so is because the community broke the rules of the game is now going to pay for it.

OSDL didn't go back on its word. It kept its word to the developer that worked for them. They chose not to censure a developer, who in his spare time was working on reverse engineering bitkeeper features for another SCM. Though Linus works for OSDL, OSDL is not the company responsible for the Linux kernel. They don't use Bitkeeper themselves for other projects, so, OSDL was not beholden to BitMover with regards to the clause about developing a competing product. Based on what I read in the press release, and in the article, I surmise that Larry was considering dropping the free version for some time, as the benefits of the symbiotic relationship between BitMover and the kernel developers were tapering off, and this gave him the excuse he was looking for.

I'm sorry you feel that way about commercial ventures on Linux. I must say, that expecting that no one will try to duplicate the feature set of a successful program is unrealistic, in any market. Closed or Open source, it makes no difference. If your competitor has a feature that makes it successful, you better have that feature in your own product, or you start falling behind. If you think that closed source competitors won't do this to you, then you are just naive.

I can hardly think any more convincing example of the superiority of OSS than what just happened.

I think it's a demonstration that Open Source is more dependable. We understood that, but it seems paradoxical to outisders that it is the exclusive rights-holder, the very company that purports to support the software, that reduces dependability.

First, don't assume it was OSDL screwing over anyone. Larry changed the deal, repeatedly. It started out that we just had to use his "notification server", and then other odd terms came up at intervals like termination of the license for those who attempt to make other software compatible with Bitkeeper through reverse-engineering. OSDL refused to terminate an employee or consultant who was also reverse-engineering Bitmover as a hobby Open Source project outside of OSDL. Had they terminated that person, the hue and cry would have been greater.

There was never a chance that this relationship could work, because of the lack of an Open Source license and the mercurialism Larry regularly displayed.

BitKeeper provided a free, powerful system that helped Linux, and the Linux community, tremondously. No one debates that

BitMover received an immense marketing boost from Linus' adoption of BitKeeper. The company founded by Larry McVoy would probably not be viable today without Linus' implied endorsement of their product. So please don't pretend that BitMover was doing Linus a favor -- the reality was very much the other way around.

When BitMover was just getting started, nobody knew what BitKeeper was, and nobody had any idea whether it was a reliable program. Because an archive of source code is the repository of the corporate jewels, reliability is crucial. Cautious sysadmins want a revision control system to have a long track record for dependability, and they would not have touched a newbie program like BitKeeper with a ten foot pole. So BitMover's survival in a crowded market was very uncertain from the start.

Linus' adoption of BitKeeper lent it enormous credibility, and is probably the most important reason why Larry McVoy's company continues to exist today. Linus benefited somewhat from BitKeeper, but BitKeeper benefited vastly more from Linus.

So let's see. What if Microsoft had an employee who was say breaking the GPL license by releasing a product that he had based on GPL code (CherryOS-like).

And MS said that's ok, because really, the employee is doing... "other" work for us, and only doing the Cherry-OS-thing on his "own-time".

Do you really expect the GPL folks who's code it was based on to buy that, and think MS might not have had some bit in it? And don't you think they'd quickly deny MS all rights to use the GPL code for any reason based on their employees breaking their license?

It's not clear to me that OSDL ever agreed to a bitkeeper license. Linus brought Bitkeeper there with him. And even Linus accepted Bitkeeper before the anti-reverse-engineering provision was in the license. But I agree that it's a demonstration that breaking licenses loses you all rights to the software. From the minute that Larry inserted the anti-reverse-engineering provision, this was destined to happen. Some of us knew better than to put ourselves in the position of having it happen to us. I never entered into a Bitkeeper license, I never used the product.

Do not accuse me, or the Open Source movement, of dismissing software freedom. That's Eric Raymond's individual gig, and perhaps that of some other people who should know better. The deprecation of Stallman and Free Software was an unfortunate thing that Eric did. I didn't condone it and have never approved of it. I have always considered Open Source to be a gentle introduction to Stallman's philosophy for business people. Once people are using the software, they will be willing to learn more.

Is it gloating if you *WERE* right though? The BitKeeper guy, Larry something? Has always been a capital asshole.

The open source position on this one is not outrageous: they want a client which can't be taken away from them.

Larry, responds by *TAKING THE CLIENT AWAY* thus proving exactly what people were saying in the first place -- we've indirectly put Larry in a position of power as he controls the only tool we can now use: not only are we ethically opposed to this, but he seems to be a dick to.

I think that it's improper to call Larry a capital asshole. It seems to me that he really did try to straddle the line between proprietary and open source, and he did it in a way that failed. Hopefully this failure will be a learning opportunity for both the Open Source Community and Larry.

This excercise hasn't been a complete loss for either Bitmover Corp. or for the Open Source community. Both have gotten something out of it, but now they're going separate ways.

Also note that BitMover is attempting to make the split as amicable as possible. He could have shut down support and distribution of the free version as of yesterday. Instead he seems to be committing to providing one last (critical) major update, and then close down development of the free version, as well as providing a few month's warning. If he was being an asshole, he would have waited until the Kernel was a week away from the 65K change limit and then dropped support with no warning.

This is something like breaking up with a girlfriend. You can do it in a respectful way, or you can do it with yelling screaming and personal items thrown out in the street. Larry seems to be doing the former. Calling him a capital bastard is pushing things in the other.

Most of my ex-girlfrinds I can still show up at the door at 9pm and be invited in for some (herbal) tea and a nice chat. I really can't quite wrap my mind around people who can't visit any of their exs' without a court order. It's just so disrespectful of the quality time and experiences that came out of the relationship (presuming that the relationship wasn't just a 'gimme' fight). Yes, does take some work to do an amicable breakup, but here's lots of value to being able to have a sane conversation with your ex. Don't knock it until you've tried it.

McVoy dismisses fundamental Free Software positions, while claiming "this is really an open source community problem and I have to say that the open source community couldn't have failed more than they have."

He goes on to compare the activities of an individual deleoper to a "bad apple" in the Marine Corps!

Rhetorical fussilades like this really expose what an unbearable asshole he is.

RMS is a nut, but NUTS ARE GOOD. Bill Gates is *exactly* the opposite kind of nut. If Bill had his way, you'd "subscribe" to software and keep paying for it every month (MS has mentioned this as their ultimate goal). If RMS had his way, software would be open (good), free (good), and nobody would be able to make a living writing software (bad).

Together they put pressure on each other and arrive at a reasonable medium.

There is no "evaluation" version with a 30 timer that starts to nag you. You can download RHEL and make and distribute your own version such as Whitebox Linux [whiteboxlinux.org]. The only real restriction is that you cannot call it Red Hat Linux since that is a trademark of Red Hat. The main thing you get with RHEL is the enterprise grade support. If you called Red Hat and asked for support for Whitebox Linux, you would be told to go jump in a lake or something. Here is the source [redhat.com] to RHEL 3. Go have a ball!

The majority of paid programmer get paid by a company that does not sell software. There will always be jobs for programmers like me. I work for a fortune 500 that has nothing to do with the Tech industry and has never sold one line of code. I get paid to develop in-house applications that are for use only by the company. Even if all commercial software went away and it all became GPL'ed/LGPL'ed, there will be plenty of jobs for programmers to work for companies making custom software to help companies to perform their day-to-day business.

Free Software neither eliminates or increases the need for user support. Good software, regardless of how it's licensed, is easier for the user to use without hand-holding. Free Software increases the options available to the user, and eventually market Darwinism will tend to narrow the field to the packages which best meet the users' needs. Not the market monopolist's need, mind you: the true needs of the real users. Niche minority software packages will continue as long as someone is interested in it, even if it's just the solitary unwashed hippy developer.

In short, developers should develop what the damn hell they feel like, and the users should use whatever they feel comfortable with.

If RMS had his way, software would be open (good), free (good), and nobody would be able to make a living writing software (bad).

*Sigh* After almost two decades of Free (OS) Software, you still don't get it. Even considering the fact that most FOSS programmers (who are writing software after all) are still around and so far haven't starved to death, you, amongst so many others, still believe that it's impossible to make a living out of it.

Who do you think is most qualified to deliver (meaningful) support, fixes and enhancements to any kind of software? Right, the original developers. While everybody may look at the (open) source code, the original developers are most qualified to do anything with it in a timely fashion. This one alone opens up possibilities for revenue creation.

What about hardware drivers? IBM does pay their developers to work on (GPL'd) Linux drivers so that that it can sell it to their customers, no? Or do you really think that Big Blue tells its software engineers that they will have to work for free while hacking FOSS drivers?

Just because you are too daft to figure out a viable business model doesn't mean it can't be done.

Sorry if this sounds too harsh for you, but you made a fine example of not getting IT.

I have managed contracts to fund developers working on open [sf.net] source [sf.net] software [sf.net] projects [paraview.org]. My employer [llnl.gov] pays programmers to write software and to release it with an open source license. The Department of Energy (our funding source) has spent literally millions of dollars over the last few years on projects like this.

I contest the claim that writing open source software entails no monetary compensation to the software developer.

This distopia you speak of where people are subscribing to software is in fact a utopia.

A subscription model to software is in fact how it *should* be. Introversion, the three-man coding team in the UK that codes out of their bedrooms, just released a new game called Darwinia. In their interviews, they talked a bit about their last release, Uplink, and mentioned how odd it was to work 10s of thousands of hours with no pay, and then suddenly stop work, and get tons of money. They pointed out that this was VERY different from just about every other job model, including entertainers like rock bands, who make most of their money touring (making money as they work). Obviously, anyone who is salaried or gets hourly wage also makes the money as they work. Not so with independent developers.

In fact, I would go even further and say the GPL lends itself to a subscription model. While I don't love Transgaming, they understand how it should work. People keep thinking that software is a "product", one that we box up and sell on shelves in a store. It isn't. Software, more than ever, is an ongoing relationship between the users and the developers. The GPL captures this, and so does a subscription model. I don't like MS anymore than the next Slashdotter, but if they are really looking at subscription, that is a good way to go. The developers get paid as they work, which means they always have an incentive to fix bugs, add features, streamline code, etc., because they continue to get paid to do so. It also allows them to release at least some of their code under GPL, because you're not just paying for the code, you're paying for the ongoing work on the code. Anytime you want to stick with where you are (keep the current version), you can. But if you want to get the most up-to-date fixes, pay for the time they spent to do that work, or, do it yourself with the old codebase.

I honestly believe that this is the way software should work. Software should never be sold, but people can still make a living writing it. Basically, developers should sell their time and talent, not the software.

Now, MS might be doing a model more along the lines of "You can only use Office 2017 as long as you pay...if you don't pay, no more Word for you!". This is also a subscription model, and it clearly isn't a good option. But not *all* subcription models are bad, and in fact, as I've said, some are good.

Wow, non-free software vendor decides to drop support for a piece of software leaving their loyal users out in the cold. Thanks BitMover for proving why Linus' decision to rely on a non-free version control system was a mistake.

Having quickly read the RTFA, it looks like the motivation behind BitMover's hissy-fit was that a contractor of OSDL was working on reverse engineering BitKeeper's protocol in his spare time, and OSDL must have refused to, or failed to make him to stop (ouch, threatening someone's job to make them stop doing open source in their spare time, not cool!). BitMover's CEO claims to be on the side of open source, yet last time I checked interoperability was a good thing, and reverse engineering was a legitimate way to achieve it. Not according to CEO Larry McVoy, to him reverse engineering is evil, and those that do it are "bad apples" that should be punished by the rest of the open source movement.

Of course, lots of this is my own suppositions based on reading between the lines of the article, I am sure if I have got anything wrong people will be quick to correct me.

Wow, non-free software vendor decides to drop support for a piece of software leaving their loyal users out in the cold. Thanks BitMover for proving why Linus' decision to rely on a non-free version control system was a mistake.

How has this left Linux out in the cold? Because he now has to pay to use BitKeeper? What's wrong with that? BitMover feels that OSDL broke faith with them by having a developer who was reverse engineering their product.

If BK is such hot stuff, then it will be worth some money to Linus. If it isn't, I guess he'll find something else to use.

How has this left Linux out in the cold? Because he now has to pay to use BitKeeper? What's wrong with that?

Because people were encouraged to rely on BitKeeper on the basis that it was free as in beer, but now it isn't, and migrating to an alternative will undoubtedly be a major burden for the Linux development process.

Did your grocery store ever offer you free bread and milk? Did they imply that this would be an ongoing offer? Was there ever a concern that your household was becoming dependant on that free bread and milk? And once you did become dependant on that free bread and milk, did your grocery store now demand the 4 bucks because they discovered one of your household members was learning how to bake bread?

Surprisingly enough, almost exactly this scenario really happens, and results in children dying.

Companies (specifically Nestlé) give free infant formula to mothers in third world countries, marketing it as better than the free alternative. The mother uses the free milk, and her natural supply dries up. Then suddenly the rules change, and Nestlé demands cash for more milk. To add to the problem, she has to find a supply of clean water to mix the formula with, which can be problematic.

Even though Nestlé never say up front that they are offering an ongoing free supply of milk, they still get boycotted by many people who find their behavior immoral in the extreme.

So your attempt to show by analogy that BitKeeper have done nothing wrong, in fact fails to convince.

If reverse engineering is explicitly forbidden in a license, and someone has agreed to that license, then reverse engineering is illegal.

Well, that's the question, isn't it? You state this like it is obvious, but it isn't obvious. Reverse engineering for interoperability is protected under US copyright law AND the DMCA. In fact, there is at least one court case pending right now to determine this very issue. Read more about it here. [eff.org] Very interesting stuff.

Anyway, given that

The OSDL had the license

the employee was NOT employed by OSDL to do the reverse engineering and

reverse engineering is protected under copyright law

I could see OSDL suing BitMover for breach of contract, which seems backwards, but I really think it is questionable if they gave BitMover any cause to do this, and it is going to cost them dearly to migrate over the entire version history to a new format, especially from one that is proprietary and needs to be reverse engineered before the move can happen.

Although it may be offtopic, but non-free software vendors aren't the only ones dropping support for popular products and disappointing their loyal users. Mozilla recently did that with Seamonkey, so that they could focus on Firefox.

Although it may be offtopic, but non-free software vendors aren't the only ones dropping support for popular products and disappointing their loyal users. Mozilla recently did that with Seamonkey, so that they could focus on Firefox.

Actually, it's very relevant, because it's exactly the point: since Mozilla is open source, if enough people are interested, it's easy for the browser suite version to live on even if the original maintainers are no longer pursuing it. And, it turns out that enough people are, so we get a solid maintainer transition plan and a workable future for Mozilla SeaMonkey [mozilla.org]. No such thing is possible with BitKeeper.

Interesting quote from a 2003 Linux World artcle [linuxworld.com] on McVoy and the adoption of BK by Linus:

I asked McVoy if the flak he gets from zealots on the LKML is bad enough to make him do what Perens and others have suggested he might do, which is to take it all back and not allow open source developers free use of the product. McVoy thought for a few moments and we talked about other things before responding fully. "To answer your earlier question, will we ever take it away? McVoy said. "I don't think we will ever take it away, but I may very well take me away."

I'm not a kernel developer, but it seems to me Perens and RMS were right from the start. Good riddance and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Man, remember all those people "flaming" over the freedom of tools on the lists? What was with them, anyway? Aren't they just starting a "religious war?" Who cares if this tool is free. It didn't cost me anything. Those crazy license zealots.

But wait.

Now, look what happened. The company (or individual) that was your friend a couple of years ago, decides today that you've offended them. Now they are taking their ball and going home.

Now you are stuck. You need to replace what they gave you. Oh, it'll cost you: manpower, lost opportunities, potentially a pile of pesos... Get ready for a painful transition. And as annoying and dangerous as this is for source control in mainline kernel development, there are many, many scenarios where this kind of manuevering will screw you much worse - alienating your customers, stranding years of development, the whole works.

This is why freedom matters.

And what is BitMover so upset about? That anyone would dare compete with them?

The audacity!

Does any vendor of a commercial product have a moral high ground to complain when a competitor appears? And whose problem is it if they are trying to charge money for something other will do for free?

I always find it ironic that most of those who flame RMS et al usually argue that they're just being ideological, and all those who disagree "just want to get things done" and "free software 'zealots' are just being impractical".

Nah. I was won over to free software because it's practical. I've never seen handing your data over to be managed by proprietary software product as "practical".

I'm kind of bitter that way as I've been using computers for a long time, since the early eighties, and have had too much experience of what happens when proprietary vendors do not support you any longer, even often with no malice intended, as the manufacturers of the Dragon 32, Sinclair QL, and Commodore Amiga can demonstrate. I switched to GNU/Linux. Because it was practical. Because I knew that I didn't have to rely on a third party for support, because I could help others and get the information I need to support others, because no matter what happened, I'd be able to continue with what I had.

Practical? You bet. Ideological? Perhaps, but only the same way as my dive instructor was "ideological", I mean he was obsessed with safety, obsessed I tell you! All I wanted to do was go down 60 feet and look at coral, but oooooooo noooooh! It's all "Buddy System" and "nitrogen levels" and other stuff.

Ok, that's facetious. The latter is about life and death. But there's no reason that the less serious nature of proprietary vs open and free should make me unconcerned about the issue.

The fact is and remains, that for some people, and in many situations, the burden of switching between proprietary apps is still far, far, far less than the burden and lost productivity and time that is spent on F/OSS applications.

And in many situations, that is true. And in most situations, it's not important.

The different between FOSS and proprietary is this: for the former, I don't have to switch. For the latter, I do.

If Commodore Amiga's operating system had been Free Software, the chances are I'd still be using it today. It would, by now, have a community of developers built around it who would have kept it up to date, ported it to commodity hardware, etc.

So, to be honest, this kind of argument doesn't impress me. Why, exactly, do I need to switch from sendmail? I don't. I can't envisage needing to any time in the next decade, can you?

Why did I need to switch from AmigaOS? 'cos it was set in stone. There'd never likely be an update, and even if there was one, I'd be unlikely to obtain it, and it's unlikely it'd ever move forward very far.

Of course it's reasonable for them to do this. But this is exactly why people didn't want to start using it in the first place - because you become beholden to the goodwill of a third party. That's an uncomfortable spot for anyone to be in, anywhere.

The fact that Larry is being pissy about a tenuous connection to a third party developer working on a BK alternative just makes him sound like an asshole. It was nice to read his little speech about accepting commercial developers, like any time a company releaases a commercial product for Linux all the OSS guys should cease work on anything to compete with it. That attitude is the whole reason OSS got started in the first place.

If I blame anyone, I blame the dismissive people who said this would never happen, and if it did, it wouldn't matter.

BitMover is doing what's best for BitMover. They had a sexy marketing line with "fake freedom" and it fooled some people. Who do you "blame?" The marketing department? Or the people they convinced?

This is not a story about a corporation "getting burned" because someone dared to create an open source version of their product. Excuse me, that's called competition, and you can't play that card without being fundamentally against open source, if not all competition.

This is a story about the dangers of non-free software - dangers that exist for everyone, for AT&T and IBM just as much as for Linux and Gnu hackers.

I just hope everyone, corporate or otherwise, learns from the experience. If we don't, we can blame ourselves.

Linus "picked" Bitkeeper because Larry harangued him in Linus' home, around the release time of 2.4>

Linus was dropping important patches - cos his versioning was done from a mail spool.

Larry was writing Bitkeeper and had been pushing this for a couple years. Finally Linus gave in - saying there was a problem - and agreed to use a vcs that didn't get in his way. Then Larry made his pitch...

What they are not fine with is people using the free version they give out to create a competitor that could help put them out of buisiness.

But that is, of course, not what seems to have happened. What happened, accordingto the write up, is that someone who had at some point been been payed some moeny by OSDN was, completely unrelatedly, working on a possibly competitive product. No one is claiming this contractor was using BK in his work on that product.

basicly BM's interpretation of the licence is that no one who has any connection, however tenuous, with an organisation using the free BK can work on a version control system. This looks to me to be a clause specifically created to be impossible for the licencee to police, and so to provide a way for BM to remove the licence on a whim.

I told you so. Did I not tell you? WHAT DID I SAY? It's bad enough they don't put a GNU/ in front of the thing, but NOW this happens. I told Torvalds, you will rue the day, you will rue the day you used BitKeeper, but noooooo. He called me a crack addict and used it anyways. I get no respect. -- RMS

Using which storage backend? BerkeleyDB or the filesystem-based storage system?

Are you sure it was really that much slower with a huge repository? Or just with a huge working copy?

Subversion is not universally faster than CVS (checkouts and imports can be significantly slower, but you don't do those very often anyway), but it's generally faster where it counts. It also scales very nicely (for the most part), and I'd be surprised if correct use of SVN was really that much slower, even at 120K files. (I've never had a repository that big, but people talk about having them that big on the mailing list all the time.) One place where it might be slow is if you have a working copy with 120K files in it and try to do an update or commit from the top-level WC directory, since that would require SVN to locally crawl the whole WC tree. There is work being done to improve the places where SVN still lacks in speed, though.

As for being unusable around 1000 files? That's a bunch of crap. I use a >5000 file working copy every single day (>20000 file repos), and it is VERY zippy.

Note that Larry McVoy has pointed out that the number of improvements to the commercial version due to suggestions from Open Source developers has been dropping sharply. To me, that means "giving free copies to these guys has been beneficial to my bottom line, but isn't doing much for me lately, in the financial sense". It sounds like this reverse-engineering issue is a smokescreen, a scapegoat for cutting off the "freeloaders" (those contributing to improving the product).

But giving out the free version *wasn't* hurting the bottom line. Starting to charge for the free version isn't going to get the people who were using it to start paying, instead it's likely to get them to find some other tool. It's not like source control packages aren't a dime a dozen...

In the past developers were exposed to bitkeeper through work on the Linux kernel. Then there was the possibility that through that exposure they would recommend BitKeeper for the proprietary projects they build on top of

OSS communities tend to settle on one project, and nothing or noone ever seriously competes with it. Ie; the linux kernel, SAMBA, OO.o, Mozilla, GIMP, eventually either KDE or Gnome (heck, used to be lots of desktops), etc..

In the source control realm, it seems to be all about subversion. It seems to have the mindshare and community behind it.

I've become a recent fan of Martin Pool [sourcefrog.net], and I've been keeping tabs on his work with Bazaar-NG [bazaar-ng.org], his next generation version of Bazaar, as a distributed free source code control system, for Ubuntu [ubuntulinux.org].
It's early in development yet, but if there's one thing I've learned from Martin Pool, is he does great work! Keep tabs on him.:)

What's wrong with the free version he already has? Does it require replacement?

I don't see this as a problem for the time being.

It's not a problem for the time being. However, they have to move off BK in the near future. At least some of the product is hosted at "bkbits", whatever that is. Also, I believe that the BK folks can revoke the free license for people that are already using it, making it illegal to use. They may also refuse to sell a commercial license to those people who have lost their free licenses.

So yeah, it requires replacement if the BK folks say it does, and the friction got significant enough that Linus wants to make it happen. Linus has tried to make it sound like he & Larry McEvoy (?) have amicably come to this agreement. That may be the case. Larry isn't getting anything out of his free version anymore, and Linus isn't Vivien Leigh. He doesn't want to depend on the kindness of strangers.

Doesn't BitMover realize that companies license their products due to Linus using it? Linus's sarcastic comments about BitMover just pushes companies away, as probably intended. Won't that just screw themselves over?

It's a bit silly to say 'I told you so" - especially since I didn't actually say it. I thought the arguments made by Linus had some logic behind it too (the technical-merrit-before-anything-else approach). Often I thought both sides (Stallman and Linus) had some valuable viewpoint on it, and it was difficult to say who actually was right on the matter.

It seems now, after all, it was R.Stallman all along. Yes, Linus has a good point in chosing for technical superior alternatives...BUT, in the end, as is clearly shown now, you can't just devide the political/ideological/proprietary issue from the mere technical one. When push comes to shove, an alternative that isn't really free, isn't really an alternative. You are always dependend on the goodwill of whomever owns the product- even when buying it, I may add.

So, it would seem the viewpoint of Linus, in this instance, is the weaker one, because now he doesn't have a 'tecnological superior' product anymore, and what is he going to do? Go for another proprietary product, because it's technologically better? And have the same thing happen to him again? I don't think so. I think he learned his lesson, and he will go for the really free alternatives that R.Stallman suggested, which, albeit not as good, at least allow you to continue with it as you see fit.

Stallman can be a nag sometimes because of his gnu/linux diatribe, but in this instance, he was right.

If you follow some of the links from the article, it talks about productivity doubling since using BitKeeper.

Even if there is a cost now moving to something else, it may still work out better in terms of productivity to have used BitKeeper for the three years. Also the use of BitKeeper in Linux seems to encouraged a lot of work on open source alternatives, so they may well be better now than they would have been had BitKeeper not been chosen.

So from the practical, rather than ideological, point of view, even with dropping it now it may still have been the best choice.

"If you follow some of the links from the article, it talks about productivity doubling since using BitKeeper."

There is, ofcourse, always the matter that there might be a relation noted, but therefor not a causality. Is there really a heightened production? Is it due to Bitkeeper? Is it *all* due to Bitkeeper?

Those are reasonable questions, and I think, even the neutral Linus could be biased a bit in this regard, because after all, he has made and kept to this decision for 3 years, contrary to much critique.

"Even if there is a cost now moving to something else, it may still work out better in terms of productivity to have used BitKeeper for the three years. Also the use of BitKeeper in Linux seems to encouraged a lot of work on open source alternatives, so they may well be better now than they would have been had BitKeeper not been chosen."

The cost will not be minute, I assure you. Yes, it *might* have been worthwile, but I have problems with this 'might' because it is largely based on speculation. If it really is all that much beneficial, he (Linus) would obviuosly chose another technological superior, yet proprietary system. I doubt that he will, however. Well, we'll see.

"So from the practical, rather than ideological, point of view, even with dropping it now it may still have been the best choice."

See above.

"When you are provided a powerful tool for no cost under the condition that you don't fund the creation of a competing tool based on that technology you are not at the whim of someone's goodwill."

Ermm...yes, you are. I don't follow you: you just describe a situation where, at least in that instance, you are at the whim, and you claim it's indicative that you aren't? Unless you equal 'whim' with totally unreasonable demands, this makes no sense. however, being depended on the goodwill of someone does not infer being unreasonable: they can have very good reasons (even economical ones are good too, in a sense); but still it remains a fact you are at their mercy.

"When they approached OSDL and said you have a employee doing this (reverse engineering our technology), please have them stop and OSDL says it's not our problem."

See above. Besides, reverse engeneering isn't illegal per sé, so they were right to say it's not there problem.

"Its not like they all of the sudden started says hey OSDL/Linus you now need to start paying for this since you like it. They said we are giving you free access to our tool but you have staff that are now striking at our revenue line, which happens to be how we fund this tool you like. Please have them stop and we will continue to provide this tool."

That's very amicable (or not) of them, but it still means one is not free to use the tool; thus, one is dependend on their goodwill.

"When you still thumb your nose at the company who has employees to support and revenue to generate you are only putting them under the gun."

See above.

"So based on this evidence you can see this isn't a RS versus Linus issue versus a OSDL taking responsibility issue. If OSDL came back to the table and said Ok, mea culpa, we will make this right then the problem wouldn't be there."

Yes, it would, since it would still be clear that they are not really free. If they can say 'do not do this" they can say "do not do that" neither. Whether it is reasonable from their perspective or not doesn't enter the picture: it still makes it clear that they can't use the tool totally free.

"Make Sense?"

Not really, when you look at it strictly from the viewpoint of whether or not they are delivered to the goodwill of the owners of Bitkeeper. This shows they aren't, whether Bitkeepers owners were reasonable in their demands or not.

"RMS was not necessarily right. In TFA Linus is quoted as saying "three years of using BitKeeper has made some profound improvements to the workflow""

Suppose someone lends you a car, and you drive a 1000 miles in a month. That someone shows up and takes the car away because he suddenly stops liking you. Do you say, "Damn, I knew it! We should have kept walking" or "Oh well, at least we made good progress for a month?" How can you ignore the progress the kernel devs made in their process while using bk? Furthermore, it looks like some of the delegation skills that bk forced upon Linus, that sped up kernel development, may actually work with any version control system and thus lead to permanent improvement.

...and tells you that you can use it as much as you want, as long as you don't use it to transport parts for other cars. You switch your entire corporate fleet to this car, which would ordinarily be prohibitively expensively but is a lot better than the offerings at Joe's Free Car Lot. You come to depend on those loaner cars.

Some guy at an unrelated company looks at the loaner car's ignition system to see if he could make it work on one of the models available at Joe's Free Car Lot. Your "friend" responds by yanking everyone's loaner cars.

What do you do next? Try to find someone else to loan you an expensive car? Buy a new fleet of your own? Or decide that helping Joe upgrade his fleet to everyone's mutual benefit is a worthy investment?

BitKeeper's main claim to fame was that Linus and the kernel folks used it. That's the kind of endorsement that you can't buy for any amount of money. Without that, most people would never even know BitKeeper exists.

Its a really stupid move. An open source competitor might have taken some of their business, but most of the open source users would probably be using something else free anyway. 90% of corporate customers would rather pay for something. An open source clone would probably validate BitKeeper.

Larry goes on about how pro-open source he is but anyone that licences products with a restriction on what the users can do in their own free time is an arsehole. If MS had produced an EULA for Word that said it can't be used by people who use Acrobat Distiller, they would have rightly been scorned. Same goes for Larry and his odious BitKeeper restrictions.

"this is really an open source community problem and I have to say that the open source community couldn't have failed more than they have." He pointed out that as a long-time open source fanatic and the CEO of BitMover, "we represent as open-source friendly a commercial organization as you are *ever* going to see"

"Unlike the Marine corp, the open source community is more than willing to ignore their bad apples as 'not my problem' (the Marine corp punishes the group for the behavior of the bad apples, pretty soon there are no bad apples)."

This supposed open source fanatic obviously doesn't have a frickin clue. Comparing OSS developers to the Marine corp makes no sense, as there is no single organization that all OSS programmers belong to. Even if you had the desire to do so, you can't sit and police a group when you have no authority. OSDL quite simply wasn't going to stop doing business with a guy because of what he does in his free time, nor should they have to. It is none of their business, nor is it McVoy's.

He's got to be delusional if he thinks he's got the most open source friendly commercial organization out there. There are a lot of companies that work in the OSS world without bullying other developers. McVoy has turned his company into a joke amongst the OSS crowd, and will probably promptly run it bankrupt too. And I have to say, it looks good on him.

Oh course, outside of April 1, they are moving their entire source tree to subversion.

This will soon prove (or disprove) the viability of subversion for very large projects. Linux kernel development model is significantly different though, so what works for KDE might not work for the kernel.

"If that's what he feels most productive using, what difference does it make?"

Indeed. If he decided tomorrow that future kernels would all be compiled in Microsoft Visual C++, what would be the problem? After all, it's not as though his choices on tools affect anyone but him, is it?

Oh, except that all the other developers are forced to either use the same tools he does or find workarounds to allow them to use different tools.

Personally I've always felt that relying on a payware source control program for kernel development was a big risk, and removed much of the stimulus to create really first-class open source source control programs: I guess that's now been clearly demonstrated. And regardless of who's in the wrong here, I can't help but feel that the Bitkeeper folks are going to lose a lot of sales due to programmers regarding them poorly as a result of this action.